‘Back in the Saddle Tour’ 1984-85

full in bloom: I wanted to make sure I covered the Aerosmith tour, because they were still getting wasted at that point, right?

Pete: Oh boy, were they. Yeah.

full in bloom: It was right before they got sober, wasn’t it?

Pete: It was right before. I mean literally during the tour. I was just jazzed to go out and play with Aerosmith. I grew up listening to that shit. Get Your Wings is still….those first two Aerosmith (albums) are still some of my favorites. So to go out with these guys…and we’re playing, right out of the gate, we’re playing arenas to sold out crowds. And we’re on the bus and we’re just playing rock star to the tens, you know, we’re just partying, getting laid, the fucking whole thing is just crazy….everything you think it could be…and we’re playing with Aerosmith. To get to meet our childhood heroes was really something, but, you know, there was something off-kilter. Everybody was pretty nice, but Steven Tyler was a fucking prick. He was just a fucking asshole. All the other guys…Joey Kramer was great to me…all the other guys were super nice.

full in bloom: Joe Perry was cool?

Pete: Joe Perry was pretty cool. They all had their separate dressing rooms. They didn’t even like each other. They didn’t talk to each other. You never saw them hanging out. I mean, a lot of bands have separate dressing rooms, but none of these guys liked each other. They were just getting fucked up. I mean, Tyler couldn’t remember the songs, let alone figure out how to get to the fucking stage. The fucking 120′ X 50′ stage; he couldn’t figure out where that was. With all the lights and sound on it, God knows where that fucking thing went. He would just blow it every night. Some shit would be great, but for the most part it was kind of an embarrassment. But people loved it, but they were just fucked up…they were just doing everything they could just to get through. So we did about two months of that and then Geffen said ‘look, these guys are a fucking….this is a joke; this is ridiculous. We’re pulling you off. You guys got to go in…I don’t know if it’s rehab, but you’re going to detox, fucking now.’ So they pulled us off the road. I don’t remember what we did during that downtime. I guarantee you, we didn’t sit around. About two months later we resumed and the guys (Aerosmith) were totally straight. And they were fucking great. Steven Tyler was like a different guy.

full in bloom: So, they all went to treatment and then two months later everyone is sober?

Pete: Something like that, you know. I don’t know if it was two months, maybe three, four. I don’t know, but dude, they all came back and they were all super cool. I remember our last night was in Florida….we played the arena in Florida and we had a party backstage after the show and there was alcohol in all of us guys in Black n’ Blue…we were drinking and smoking, going nuts and the guys in Aerosmith weren’t. The party was just us two bands! There were no chicks. There were no dudes. There was just a few management people…you know, personal managers from each band…and the band! And I was just like, ‘where’s the fucking chicks?’ Needless to say, that didn’t last too fucking long. But it was kind of a thing we had to do. As a matter of fact, if you go to my Facebook page, there’s a picture from that very party. It shows me and Steven Tyler, it shows Jaime (St. James)…I don’t know if Joe Perry is in it, but I think Tom Hamilton is, Brad Whitford. I’m standing there with my arm around Steven Tyler. Him and I talked for hours, because, you know, he was one of my idols, you know, he just fucking was…and here he was, he was a new guy, so I could wipe the slate clean. They were really cool at that time.